I think the problem so many of us have is that our infections are not diagnosed in the active stage and become chronic and stealth. I was lucky in that a blood test showed an active mycoplasma infection when I first got sick with what I thought was the worst flu anyone had ever had. Unfortunately, at the time, no one knew it takes at least six months on ABX to drive the mycoplasmas into latency. Lyme and mycoplasmas are both cell-wall-deficient bacteria and both can change shape and deposit cysts deep in the body's tissues. These cysts can reactivate when one gets run down or injured even if one has the infection under control.

Once these infections go chronic, it can be extremely difficult to get a diagnosis. The longer one is sick with them, the more difficult it can be to get them under control. It is important to try to get tested when the infections are active. One of the problems is that docs have long believed that Lyme is rare--WRONG! Also, not everyone knows he or she has been bitten by a tick and not everyone has a bullseye rash.